My first reaction would be to laugh my ass off. My second reaction was to wonder how he knew how to spell ptomaine.
But how the parents would react when getting this letter is not the issue, it is how the kid thought in his misery they would react.
please be nice, dudes, this is a fun thread about a fun song.
Nicely done! Him writing “kindly disregard this letter” instead of tossing it is a bit odd - except when you realize it is absolutely essential as the final punchline for the entire song. Exactly the same as the punchline from years later - “never mind.”
Interestingly, it’s hanging in at around 5-1…so far 10 people believe an interpretation that I honestly find a little hard to figure out.
I was 9 years old when Camp Granada first came out. I remember liking it, and it is still lurking somewhere amongst my mp3s and occasionally pops up. I always assumed the events were entirely made up by the kid in an attempt to get his parents to bring him home as they are all way beyond what would be at a real camp.
I always figured the Ulysses reference was related to the Homer stuff. I would have only been vaguely familiar with it but it just seemed to fall in with things like Hercules and all the other muscle rippling Greek hero movies that were around at the time.
I haven’t read through the entire thread so maybe this has been brought up, but it seems to me that any arguments about what a child of that age at that time might or might not think, do, or know is entirely irrelevant. There is no kid involved. The ideas come from the mind of a 39 year old man, what he knows about, and what he thinks other adults mind find funny. Any attempts to involve reality or logic is like trying to logically explain how Bugs Bunny and friends could talk.
Now, for the next thread, please logically explain “They Are Coming To Take Me Away”, or better yet, the B side.
I never claimed he would not be likely to be familiar with the consequences. I said he would not be likely to THINK about them.
I’ll grant you that after he wrote the letter he MIGHT have had time to think about them while he was composing the music to go along with the words. BUT WAIT! He didn’t compost the music! He just used whatever melody he happened to find lying around that fit! Because he was in a hurry to go outside and play!
Yikes.
Please mentally edit that sentence, and replace the word “compost” with “compose.”
Thank you. That is all.
It’s [del]well-[/del] adequately supported by cultural stereotypes of sleep-away camp norms, from 1961’s The Parent Trap to Bless the Beasts and Children.
But my version doesn’t require that the rain be real, either (note that it miraculously changes to HAIL in the last verse. For the sake of rhyming with “sailing.” Just as in the first verse, “raining” is chosen to rhyme with “entertaining”).
Yes, you did, but it was your brilliance in post 178 that caused me to join this thread and comment on it in post 200.
He’s writing from camp – it’s letter writing time, (perhaps because it’s raining) and he’s been told to write a letter. Has camp changed since when I was a kid?
Any way, all that work? He’s not going to through it out.
Hey, cool. We’ve been threadspotted.
Cool. My first time.
I am still amazed at the arguments here. This is impressive.
My new theory.
Assume there was a Little Allan. Assume it was raining. Assume thereby the Head Coach did read to them, rather than go outside in the rain.
OK, “he wants no sissies” so he reads a ten modern translation of The Odyssey. Hero is Ulysses . This is a story of masculine many men, no doubt.
Little Allan is bored. He remembers listening at the door at his parents cocktail parties* where they talk about a scandalous book called Ulysses. Either he confuses the two or he deliberately uses the book name to get a reaction. I am willing to go for either.
- I did this, myself. Anyone else? To this day I remember fondly the Limeliters as that’s one of the LP’s they played .
How’s that funny? The audience is just supposed to know all that backstory- what book was actually read, what Allan’s son is confused about and what his parent’s read? Way too complicated.
WHen Allen’s son’s says “he read to us from something called Ulysses”, I’m guess Allen actually meant that he read to them something called Ulysses.
Apparently the time has come to shut up about this. After all, we’ve been Threadspotted (the implications of which I’d rather not think about), and at least one poster here has equated “stating a contrary view” with “condescension.” (Funny how all those who agree with his/her view are not perceived as condescending, regardless of how those views have been expressed, which has upon occasion seemed quite condescending to me.)
So some final thoughts…
First, let’s agree that NO ONE here can say with absolute certainty what Alan Sherman had in mind when he wrote the couplet in question — unless we find a direct quote from him on the subject. I’ve asked if anyone has either Sherman’s biography or autobiography, but no one has come forth with a quote from either. In the absence of this, we can only GUESS his meaning.
Second, I’ve noted the generally high level of erudition and literacy among those who frequent this board. I think it would be fair to say that these levels are not representative of those that would be found in the general population, or specifically, of the universe of people who listened to Sherman’s song when it was contemporary, bought the single, or heard it in retrospect on Oldies radio stations in the years that followed.
I thought it might be interesting to pose the question to some people outside of this thread. I emailed it to some 20+ friends of mine, asking them for their historic interpretation of the line…uninfluenced by anyone else, and adjuring them not to look anything up about it. I gave them no choices; I simply asked for their interpretation. I also asked their opinion on whether the stories the camper related were reality-based or “made up.”
Lest you think I purposely selected a group of dumbasses :), all of those I emailed save one are college graduates. A couple were even English majors. All are of reasonable intelligence and cultural awareness.
I received 12 replies, and while this is a small sample size, I still think the answers are revealing:
Now, do these results tell us anything about the meaning Sherman intended for the Ulysses line? No…but they do speak to an important corollary issue that revolves around the original question.
I mentioned the strictures that were placed on Top 40 radio of the time. I offered $100 to anyone who could point out a Top 40 hit with a passage that came within 100 miles of the suggestion in Sherman’s song that an adult would read what was perceived at the time as pornographic literature to a group of 8- to 10-year-olds. I’ve had no takers on that offer — in fact, as has been typical for many of the points I’ve made in this thread, the entire point was roundly ignored.
My assertion is that, regardless of whether Sherman intended it to be or not (and I believe it’s more than possible that he did), the Homer interpretation had to be available to Top 40 radio’s Music and Program Directors (and by extension, the listening public) in order for “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” to make it on the air.
My small survey indicates that the greater number (8-4) of those who responded did avail themselves of the Homer interpretation. I previously stated that I’m very certain that this interpretation holds true for the entire universe of listeners to this song. I invited someone to dispute this statement…and again, there was silence.
In summary…
I have articulated a scenario that is entirely consistent with something that could have happened in real life. It was noted that Sherman was inspired to write “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” by his own son’s letters home from camp. One presumes that these letters were not flights of fancy or total fabrications…so there’s no reason that the song Sherman wrote could not have featured events firmly grounded in reality (albeit a reality sometimes exaggerated by the imaginings of a frightened kid).
The knock against the Homer interpretation has been that it’s not “funny.” I disagree, and have shown how it can be funny (and some of my survey respondents gave similar reactions to it) — albeit apparently not as much of a laugh riot as reading wildly age-inappropriate literature to 8- to 10-year-olds, which I continue to find a lot creepier than I do funny.
But regardless…mine is a consistent scenario that requires ignoring absolutely nothing other than Homer’s work not being entitled Ulysses — and I’ve also shown how this is not a great concern.
Those who support the Joyce interpretation have a long list of items that must be summarily ignored…a list I’ve detailed several times. And the best they can do for justification is to say “Well, it’s comedy…it doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to have any internal logic to it.”
That may be true of some comedy, but there’s nothing about “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” to indicate it’s the type of comedy for which this need be true.
I’m sure the respondents in this thread have come from a wide age range, including some who were present in 1963 when this song was released. But they have apparently forgotten that there was a time when gentle humor — free of the need for any off-color or non-reality-based implications — still worked and was appreciated by the audience.
Others have never known such a time…and that’s a shame.
What was the age range of your respondents? For those who are too young to automatically think of Joyce’s Ulysses in the context of it being censored on grounds of obscenity (and I include myself in that number), it’s effect is more or less the same as “The Odyssey” - it’s a dense work of literature, any humour comes from the mental image of an overly macho “Don’t want no sissies” coach reading literature and any horror comes from the kids finding it boring.
Having seen this thread, I’m more inclined to believe that Joyce’s Ulysses was the one intended for the reasons elucidated previously - imagining Joyce’s Ulysses fits better with the structure of the first verse as normal camp complaints turning into an escalating series of unlikely horrors, each set up by a slightly contrived rhyme (What summer camp has waiters, except to rhyme with alligators?) and the comedic effect of said escalating series of horrors is more important than the literal plausibility of “Li’l Allan’s” situation.
Interestingly, in Cambridge University Press’ Companion to Ulysses (Joyce’s) they specifically reference Allan Sherman’s song as an example of use in popular culture. Here’s the link http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/companions/chapter.jsf?bid=CCO9781139696425&cid=CCO9781139696425A012
Given Allan Sherman’s own history (He was a Jew born to parents who ignored and rejected their Jewish culture. He went and lived with his grandparents and reconnected with his culture and most of what he wrote were parodies of Jewish culture of that time period), I think he identified with Leopold Bloom from Ulysses. Or at least was sympathetic to him. Someone up thread even mention that his bad was the James Joyce Players.
Given how exceptionally well the Ulysses’ reference works, from a humor, cultural relevance and stylistic standpoint; considering the audience for the song was primarily adults, I think it’s pretty clear. This isn’t such a pornographic, obscene joke that you have to invoke “simpler times” and “people liked gentler humor” back then. It’s a perfectly acceptable joke for a grown up audience, even in the 1950s and 1960s.
Yes, and as I’ve said, as long as “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” was part of Sherman’s nightclub act or merely a cut on his album, I would agree. This would be parallel with Tom Leher’s songs, which were mentioned up-thread.
But tellingly, none of Leher’s songs was turned into a Top 40 single. Once the decision is made to do this, then the rules change completely.
What was the audience for Top 40 AM radio in 1963? Primarily pre-teens through 18. “Blue” humor, or even a hint of it, just wasn’t acceptable on the Top 40 airwaves. Which is why you’ll find no other Top 40 hit from 1963 or earlier that strays into anything close to the realm of this line in Sherman’s song.
And why the “gentler” interpretation of “Ulysses” had to be available.
This was six years after the Everly Brothers went to #1 with the banned-in-Boston “Wake Up Little Susie,” a humorous song about how the couple’s friends and family aren’t going to believe that they weren’t fucking when they inadvertently stayed out all night (“What are we going to tell our friends when they say Ooh-la-la!”?).
All respondents but one are in their 50s or 60s. The one who stated he could think of no context within which Joyce would work is in his early 20s. I’m quite sure, knowing his level of knowledge and intelligence, that he is aware of the content of Joyce’s Ulysses and the controversy surrounding it in 1963.
Mine did! Not “waiters” in the sense of ones who say “May I take your order, sir?”…but kids who brought the food on plates to be served to you and took away the plates you’d used. Otherwise, with hundreds of campers in the mess hall, there would have been one hell of a buffet line!
Again, under my scenario none of the “horrors” are “unlikely,” nor do they “escalate.” They’re simply a series of things that happen at summer camp, filtered through the eyes of a kid with an active imagination in a strange environment — who’s also bored as he writes the letter because it’s raining and he’s not having any fun.